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I inspected one of my hives this morning, it had about 8 or so queen cells, two capped. My marked queen, who I put in the hive 2 weeks ago after getting mated in an Apidea, was still in the hive and there were frames with eggs. I put the queen in a nuc with three frames and a few frames shook...

I have 5 Apidea’s which I have now transferred the mated queens from. I don’t need to raise any more queens right now. What is the best way of getting the bees in the Apedia into a hive? Shake them out in front of hives? Thanks.

I have 2 nucs that I intend to unite into one full hive. Currently they are starting to run out of room, plenty of brood and plenty of nectar coming in. One nuc has just produced a charged queen cell, it has a 2021 queen that I want to get rid of prior to uniting. The other nuc has a new queen...

I had one of my hives start to swarm today, they started to settle in a tree today near the hives, then went back into the hive. The queen wasn’t clipped, but I presume she stayed in the hive. I went into the hive an hour later, did a queen to nuc and took out all the queen cells. I did this...

Ron Brown’s booklet Managing Mininucs, mentions using cut comb containers to fill with fondant in Apidea’s them swapping them out for a refill with a another preloaded cut comb container. The cut comb boxes I have don’t fit, I wonder if anyone can recommend a cut comb container or any other that...

I am transferring my queen cells into the incubator tomorrow (grafted on Thursday). The few times before, I have set up the Apedia’s and put the Virgin queens in as they emerge. In the BBKA queen rearing booklet the say to put the queen cell into the Apedia 2 days before emerging. I can see...

Two of my hives I inspected this afternoon had play cups with an egg in. None with larvae and none with royal jelly. Are these considered swarm prep, or just play cups? I saw the queens in both hives, plenty of eggs also. I have knocked them back, but would use queen to nuc if this is considered...

I had my first attempt at grafting today, out of 20 cups I think I have about 6 larvae looking okay. The rest may be damaged or maybe turned over. I am looking for 4 queens, so I stopped at that point, I will see how many get fed tomorrow, and most likely have a second go. I was definitely...

I am going to have my first attempt at grafting next week, I wondered if people use dry grafting or prime the plastic cells first with royal jelly? I am not expecting a huge take up of the grafts on attempt one, but you have to start somewhere. Thank you.

I have been reading about using swarm boxes for finishing queen cells. What do you do with the nurse bees you have shaken into the swarm box after the cells are transferred to nucs? Do you shake them out in the apiary to beg there way into any hive or maybe the hives they came from?

I want to raise about 4 to 5 queens from one of my queens. I have 4 full colonies and 2 nucs, I want to make a colony temporarily Q minus to get the emergency response. Is it possible to do this and then when the sealed cells are placed in Apeda’s put the queen back in to the temporary cell...

A few years back I made an incubator, I have only used it once so far, it works well. For heat I have 2 light bulbs, controlled by an STC-1000 thermostat, I wondered if the on /off cycling of the bulbs, or the brightness would affect or stress the new queens? If so does anyone know of a good...

Today I went back into a couple of hives that I removed the queen to a nucleus for swarm control on Wed 20th April, I removed all of the sealed and unsealed queen cells leaving just one large open queen cell in each. This was a day before the recommended 7 days, due to tomorrow being colder...

I have a honey warming cabinet that I purchased about 4 years ago, it was from one of the UK big equipment suppliers. The outer installation on heating cable has started to breakdown and fall off, exposing a mesh underneath. I can buy a new cable complete with thermostat for just over £100 from...

I have 2 poly nucs with 2021 queens, on size 14 x 12 frames, the nucs are nicely full, a good brood pattern and plenty of stores. I am going to start the Apiguard treatment in August, then feed in September. I am wondering whether to transfer each nuc into to a hive or overwinter in the poly...

2 of my hives that were artificially swarmed will have new queens any day now, so I presume they will be ready to mate next week. However the weather is going to be 15 deg C max for the next 10 days. The forecast shows some improvement after that. Can a queen wait 2 weeks to mate? If no, does...

Queens are usually helped out of their queen cells by worker bees chewing around the end of the cell to make the wall thin. So does that mean a queen cell can only be put in an incubator when this has happened? Or if an earlier stage sealed queen cell is put in an incubator, can the queen chew...

I have a hive that is producing charged queen cells, half a dozen or so not capped, the hive has plenty of drones. The hive also has eggs and BIAS. I tried to find the Queen on a few occasions and just cannot find her, one reason may be that there are just so many bees. I did find and mark a...

I was very late extracting some of my supers last year, some extracted okay, but some has extracted and left crystals in the cells. The supers were taken off at the end of July, so its not Ivy honey. Will the bees clean the crystals out or are they just going to be left in the cells reducing the...

Years ago my daughter brought some clear honey sweets back from France, they were really nice, a bit like fruit drops, but tasting of honey. I made some honey taffy a few years ago, that was an opaque sweet, nice but not what I was after. Does anyone have a recipe for a clear honey type of...